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A 20-year follow-up of the Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making System.

Article Excerpt
The interest inventory of the Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making System (T. F. Harrington & A. J. O'Shea, 1980, 1992, 2003) had hit rates of occupational status substantially exceeding chance expectations in the literature's 1st long-term predictive validity study since 1991. No significant gender differences were found for the Grade 10 public school students studied, an age group that commonly takes interest inventories.

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This study examines the predictive validity of the interest inventory portion of the Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making System (CDM; Harrington & O'Shea, 1980, 1992, 2003) developed in 1975. The purpose was to study the relationship between occupations suggested to high school sophomores by their CDM results and their occupations as adults 20 years after having completed the inventory. The study involved a comprehensive high school sample, which is the typical population that uses an interest inventory.

Few longitudinal studies of interest inventories have been done. Yet many assume they are predictive of future occupations. The studies that have been done do not report outcomes beyond 1991, yet occupational mobility has increased substantially since then. Hood and Johnson (1997) summarized the results of six Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB; Campbell, 1974) studies with time spans ranging from 7 to 18 years. Five of the studies involved male college students. The studies indicated that 55% to 70% (median of 66%) who took the SVIB were eventually employed in occupations congruent with their score on the occupational scales.

The studies of Hood and Johnson (1997) used a methodology called a hit rate to show the degree of agreement between the predictor and the outcome to make comparisons between earlier SVIB studies and a Holland-based SVIB study. For the earlier SVIB studies, a good hit was recorded when a person entered an occupation for which he or she had achieved a T-score of 45 or above; a poor hit was recorded for a T-score of 40 to 44. A T-score of less than 40 in the occupation indicated no hit. The Holland-based study used the Zener-Schnuelle Index of Agreement (Zener & Schnuelle, 1976), wherein a 6, 5, or 4 degree of agreement was rated a good hit; 3 or 2 a poor hit; and 1 or a clear miss.

Zytowski (1976) found substantial evidence of the predictive validity of the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey-Form DD (KOIS-DD; Kuder, 1970) for occupational selection 12 to 19 years following administration. This study was the largest (N = 882) to date and included male and female high school students. Approximately half of the participants were in occupations within .06 of their highest scores on the KOIS-DD when the follow-up study...

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